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<title>Glossary</title>
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<h1>Glossary</h1>
Last Updated: Wed 19 Jan, 2000
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<dl>
    <p>
    <dt><a name="cat"><b><tt>cat</tt></b></a></dt>
    <dd>A program on all unix systems designed to <i>cat</i>enate any
	number of files together. The beauty of this program is that
	if you catenate from the standard input (keyboard) to standard
	output (the screen), then you have a really simply way of
	seeing which characters are generated for a given
	keypress</dd>

    <p>
    <dt><a name="hex"><b>hexadecimal</b></a></dt>
    <dd><p>Hexadecimal is a way of counting which makes more sense
	that decimal when dealing with computers. In hexadecimal,
	there are 16 <i>digits</i>, instead of the 10 we are used to.
	So when counting in hexadecimal, you get: <tt>1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
	6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10, 11</tt>... The reason why
	this is interesting when dealing with computers relates to the
	way the binary counting system works, but I won't go into that
	here.
	</p>
	<p>
	Hexadecimal numbers are represented by prefixing them with
	<tt>0x</tt>. ie: <tt>0x15 = 16 + 5</tt>, or <tt>21</tt> in decimal.
	</p>
	</dd>

    <p>
    <dt><a name="od"><b><tt>od</tt></b></a></dt>
    <dd>The unix <tt>od</tt> program displays data in octal, or
	hexadecimal. This is very interesting if you want to see data
	which can't easily be displayed on the screen (binary data for
	example). See the man page for more details. (<tt>man od</tt>)</dd>

    <p>
    <dt><a name="rxvt"><b><tt>rxvt</tt></b></a></dt>
    <dd>rxvt is a color version of the popular X11 program:
	<i>xterm</i>. This provides the user with a command line
	interface while using a GUI. rxvt is generally seen as being
	the new and improved xterm, although the way it handles meta
	keys is nothing more than backward. Perhaps it will be
	improved in future versions.</dd>

    <p>
    <dt><a name="xev"><b><tt>xev</tt></b></a></dt>
    <dd><p>xev displays X11 events as they happen. Every mouse
	movement, every key press and release (even shift!) is
	reported to the user. If you type <tt>shift-a</tt> then you
	will see a sequence of events:</p>
	<ul>
	    <li>key press: shift</li>
	    <li>key press: a</li>
	    <li>key release: a</li>
	    <li>key release: shift</li>
	</ul>
	<p>
	Thus you can see what X11 sends as an event when you press the
	Meta / Alt key, for example.
	</p>
	</dd>
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<address>
Stephen Riehm<br>
e-mail: <a href="mailto:Stephen.Riehm@bigfoot.com">Stephen.Riehm@bigfoot.com</a><br>
</address>

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<b>Copyleft &copy; 1991-2000  Stephen Riehm</b>
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